


And There Will Be A Reckoning

by AdaptationDecay



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, In that it is the apocalypse and most people are dead by this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 09:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2187099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdaptationDecay/pseuds/AdaptationDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the sort of cold where - if you were out in it for too long - you went right around in a circle and started to feel warm again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And There Will Be A Reckoning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bliumchik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bliumchik/gifts).



> Thanks to Originally for the 11th hour beta!

There had been a false winter when Tiffany Aching was twelve years old. 

It had been her own fault; she'd danced with the Wintersmith and in the ensuing cold the lambs had started to die under the snow. 

She wished that were happening again. At least then she'd know why the cold had come and how to get rid of it.

At least it would only be lambs that were dying.

***

It was the sort of cold where - if you were out in it for too long - you went right around in a circle and started to feel warm again. So warm that you wanted to pull all your clothes off and bury yourself in a snowdrift. Some of the people she passed on her way Hubwards were half naked and all were completely dead.

Hypothermia, volunteered Tiffany's second thoughts. The word having been stored up in her head since she'd read the dictionary cover to cover as a child. Every time she found herself wanting to shrug off her too-big coat and boots and curl up in the snow, her second and third thoughts would remind her of the word hypothermia and she'd pull her coat more tightly around her and carry on walking into the wind.

She didn't know what had happened to the Feegles. They'd been following her around since she was nine years old and their absence was almost more frightening than the cold. 

***

The closer she got to the Ramtops, the faster the cold seemed to have come on.

The corpses in Ohulan Cutash were outdoors in ordinary clothes, not because hypothermia had made them throw off their coats but because they'd still been dressed for spring when the cold had unrolled over them from the hub like a deadly blanket.

Down on The Chalk the cold had been slower in arriving, so that Tiffany hadn't realised what was happening until the danger was already upon them and people were dying.

The survivors had called for a witch. When the tinderboxes started to fail and the coal wouldn't burn, they'd asked Tiffany to create a fire with magic. She'd had to explain that witchcraft didn't work like that. You couldn't make heat, only move it around -- and there was always a reckoning.

The next day, more people were dead. Tiffany had told them to go Rimwards and keep moving until they found a place where fire still worked.

They'd asked where she was going and she'd said Hubwards. She said that Lancre would be more dangerous than The Chalk now, but that there was somebody there who might be able to help.

***

It was getting harder and harder to find heat.

Tiffany set out with plenty of food and had taken plenty more from the dead on her lonely journey, but nothing would burn any more and she was frightened that the frozen bites of stolen bread wouldn't provide enough energy to keep her body warm and moving for much longer. She began to think that if she went to sleep she would freeze and not wake up.

She was distracted from these thoughts by a "Caw!" from high above. She had barely seen the raven before her hands were out in front of her.

"Thunder on my right hand. Lightning in my left hand. Heat above me. Frost below me."

As she stole its heat, a curl of warmth sprang up inside her chest.

The raven fell dead from the sky. She never saw where it landed

***

Lancre was frozen and dead. Tiffany didn't stop to look, but instead stamped and whistled defiantly as she made her way up the mountain towards Granny's cottage.

She sang a rude song about hedgehogs, but there was no answering chorus from Nanny Ogg's house when she passed.

Tiffany reached out and downward with her mind to see if she could feel any heat from inside the Copperhead Mountains where the dwarfs had their forges.

She couldn't.

***

The goats were frozen stiff in Granny's yard and the beehives were quiet. For a moment, Tiffany hesitated on the threshold. Now that her journey was over, she was frightened that she hadn't made the right choice. What if she should have gone Rimwards with Dad and Wentworth? What if she'd made a mistake?

She knocked on the door.

Nobody answered.

***

When she finally worked up the nerve to enter the cottage, she saw Granny sitting in the chair by the fireplace holding a sign.

**I aten't dead**

Tiffany ran to her, but stopped inches away.

Corpses didn't rot in the unnatural cold. The dead in Ohulan had looked like statues, while those closer to The Chalk had looked like burn victims, their skin having slowly blackened as the cold took them.

Frostbite, offered Tiffany's second thoughts, helpfully.

Granny looked like the dead of The Chalk and not of the Ramtops. Her hands were black against the sign as if she'd held out for a while against the cold.

But her mouth was full of ice. Tiffany could recognise death when she saw it and she'd seen a great deal of it on her long climb into the mountains.

She sat and cried and the tears froze on her cheeks.

***

You can't cry forever, said Tiffany's second thoughts after a respectful pause. Shouldn't you be planning your next move?

No, said her third thoughts. You should be paying attention. Something here isn't right.

That was enough to make Tiffany stop crying.

It was the hands. Granny's hands were black, which meant she hadn't frozen straight away. You had to be alive to get frostbite. That meant she hadn't been borrowing when the cold had come. She'd been here in the cottage and fought the cold, _then_ she'd gone borrowing and _then_ she'd died.

Tiffany's fourth thoughts said, that's a bit funny isn't it? Why would she sit down and go borrowing if she knew she'd freeze? How could she go borrowing if there was nothing left alive to borrow?

And then Tiffany's fifth thoughts, which she hadn't realised she had, said: go take that stick out of the fireplace.

She walked over to the hearth and examined it. The fire couldn't have been burning long when the cold had come and put it out, because some of the sticks weren't burned all the way. She took one of them out of the fire and straightened to examine it. Slowly, without quite knowing what she was doing, Tiffany drew the stick down the whitewashed wall of Granny Weatherwax's cottage. A black vertical line remained behind to mark its progress and Tiffany slowly added another line at an angle, so that the marks resembled a shark's tooth. Then another line like the first.

**N**

Tiffany forgot to breathe as her hands moved the stick in a lazy circle.

**No**

She focused on her breathing and tried not to think of anything in particular, to give the fifth thoughts room to come forwards.

**Nobody ever pays attention to the sign.**

Tiffany gasped and flung herself at the uninhabited and unresisting body of Granny Weatherwax, enveloping it in an awkward hug.

This is what it feels like to be borrowed, thought Tiffany. This is what I did to the animals. 

She stepped away from Granny and said aloud, "Hold on, we're getting your wall dirty. I'll find some paper."

A quick hunt through the cottage revealed a copy of the almanac and an old stub of pencil. Tiffany arranged herself at the kitchen table and tried again to clear her mind.

**You took your time.**

"I had to walk. The broomstick doesn't work in the cold. Nothing works from The Chalk to the Hub. The plains were still okay when the cold hit us, but the clacks is down now, so if we want help, we'll have to walk right down to Ankh Morpork."

**You walked the wrong way, then.**

"No I didn't. I sent the rest off and came looking for you. I knew you wouldn't be dead."

**More fool you, then.**

Tiffany looked back at the cold body of Granny Weatherwax. She straightened her spine and did not cry.

"You can stay then," said Tiffany. "If you can't go back, you can stay forever."

 **Not forever,** wrote Granny. **That's not natural. Just until we've got this sorted out.**

The next words out of Tiffany's mouth were not her own, but they were delivered in her voice and they were in any case a sentiment she backed wholeheartedly.

"I can't be having with this."


End file.
